


my blood is singing

by Anonymous



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood Drinking, Blood and Injury, F/M, Mutual Pining, Rating May Change, Violence in one scene, because reasons, mild horror elements, obviously, some gothic elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27315982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Annette tries to understand the strange, lonesome monster who saved her life, who should’ve killed her too.She did not anticipate falling in love with him.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35
Collections: Anonymous





	my blood is singing

**Author's Note:**

> This dumb fic was supposed to be a one-shot. I also wanted to post it before Halloween but alas. One Distraction coming right up anyway
> 
> ANYWAY **violence, blood** , normal vampire stuff abound in this first chapter. there’s some mild horror stuff and spookiness throughout too but for the most part it’s Annette and Felix (mostly Felix) being dramatic idiots
> 
> Title is from Florence + the Machine’s “Howl”. thank you for always being there in my time of need (when I have no idea what to title a fic)
> 
> Enjoy, ya heathens! ~~also the vampire lore is made up and the points don’t matter~~

_Dear Mother,_

_I hope you and Uncle are safe and well. I’m so sorry I’ve left it so long to write to you, but I ran into some unexpected obstacles on my travels. It’s...a rather long story, and my host is rather miserly so I don’t have the best access to paper, but I will tell you as much as I can safely enclose in a letter._

_I was following a trail in search of Father in eastern Faerghus when I crossed paths with a mercenary company. We reached a mutually beneficial agreement, but unfortunately they turned on me when they discovered I hid something valuable from them. We traveled further north and a...let’s call him, a charitable stranger freed me from the mercenaries and let me shelter among his household. They gave up on me fairly quickly after that, yet I confess I’m a little wary of leaving._

_My host, that “charitable stranger” I mentioned, is...eccentric, you can say. He’s reclusive to an extreme, staying within the confines of his home except when he goes hunting for days at a time, and paranoid to a fault. He claims to have no family or friends, but his home has enough marks of past life there that I doubt his word._

_Don’t worry for me, Mother. He doesn’t treat me unkindly for all his villainous tendencies. He doesn’t charge me board, which is very kind of him since the mercenaries stole all my coin, though I help with any chores in the meantime since his home is rather big for a single occupant (or even two). Also I would, as you must expect, grow bored with nothing to busy me while I wait out any lingering danger. It might then surprise you to know that my host does not make for poor company, and I find myself enjoying it more and more! I will say though that he’s given me quite a few frights when I can’t sleep for homesickness and I find him wandering his home by night. Those nights are actually quite nice, since we sit together and talk about everything and nothing until I fall asleep on his shoulder and every time I wake up in my bed and wonder if I’ve begun sleepwalking again._

_He has a fairly impressive collection of books and other knowledge_ _the Church destroyed_ _thought lost, so I pass so much of my time researching and reading. I wish I could tell you for what I search, but I can’t help worrying this letter will fall into the wrong hands. The last thing I want is for you and Uncle to suffer for any of my wrongdoing._

_Please don’t lose heart, Mother. I have a feeling my search is closer to the end than ever, and when I find him we’ll both return home to you._

_Give my best and my love to Uncle!_

_Love,_ _  
_ _Annie_

“What are you doing?”

Annette caught herself on the table before slipping backwards off her stool, but that did little for the skip in her heartbeat or the droplets of ink that splattered over the paper from her quill. 

“Can you _please_ announce yourself before walking up to me, Felix?” she asked. “You ruined my letter!”

“I did announce myself,” he said. He stood just behind her, and Annette tried to cover the letter with her sleeve as subtly as she could lest he read how she wrote about him. “I called your name twice. It’s hardly my fault you were absorbed in...to whom are you writing?” His sharp copper eyes landed on the letter. 

Before he could think to snatch it away Annette rolled it into a tight scroll. “It’s for my mother,” she told him. “She’s probably...worried about me.”

Felix’s brow furrowed before she tore her gaze away from him. “I...see,” he said. “How long have you been away from home?”

She flapped her jaw uselessly, counting the moons, and said, “I think it’s been half a year. I...you and I...met a few months later.”

Her heartbeat filled the silence as she waited, suddenly unsure what to expect from him. When she first encroached in his home he’d been distant, uncaring if she stayed or left so long as she didn’t bother him, but warning her she would be no safer from him than the bandits he’d slain, the ones who failed to bait him with her. 

And yet, frightened of more - or worse - pursuit, she’d stayed, despite Felix’s less than ideal accommodations, his unsavory habits, his...looming. 

The way he loomed was almost comforting now. For all he’d crept up on her - again - she found herself leaning backwards towards him. 

His fingers brushed her shoulder before falling away again, and she felt him tense when she neared, but he didn’t pull away. 

“You miss her then,” Felix said, his voice low, almost a rumble. 

“Of course I do,” Annette said. “I miss her, and my—all my family.”

“Did she teach you how to sing?” he wondered. 

She frowned but confessed, “Not exactly, but she did listen to me, sometimes.” She faced him with her eyes narrowed. “Unlike you, she didn’t bother me with questions about my silly lyrics.”

Felix blinked, looking startled. “Why not?” 

“Because they’re _silly_ ,” she insisted. She tucked the letter into her sleeve and stood. “Anyway, I’m heading into town. I want to send the letter and buy some ingredients. I’d like more variety than what I’ve planted in the garden.”

He grimaced, like he always did when she announced her intentions to venture into town. 

The first time, she’d carelessly asked if the townspeople were afraid of him.

“Of course they are,” he’d scoffed. “They’d be fools not to fear me. I don’t care to harm them, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be kind to you.”

In the end she’d gone into town half to spite him - her gratitude for his rescue had wilted in the face of his coldness - and when she’d returned to the castle with a handful of supplies he couldn’t provide for her she’d grinned and said, “They were perfectly nice to me!”

That assertion didn’t stop Felix from voicing his dislike for the idea every single time.

“You can come with me if you’re so worried!” Annette had retorted, half out of irritation and half out of...hope. Felix looked...human enough he could probably pass through town without anyone looking twice, and a part of her wanted to do something normal with him for once.

“No,” he’d rejected immediately, a furrow in his brow. “Sunlight weakens me, and even the most oblivious imbecile can sense a monster in their midst. You’d only attract more attention with me than you would alone.”

Then she’d thought he feared he would bring the people down on his castle, moving en masse to slay the monster that neighbored them, but lately she’d begun to suspect something...else. 

Maybe. She could be imagining it; it wouldn’t even be that surprising.

But before he could protest again, Annette seized his hand in a sudden streak of boldness. “Come with me this time!” she said. “Would a cloak help with the sunlight?”

Felix stared at their joined hands before his gaze darted away. “It’s not the light,” he said. “It’s the heat.”

“Well, it’s not like you’d be going hunting!” Annette said. “Come on, I’ll even buy you...something, as my treat.”

“You hardly have any coin,” he noted with a trace of amusement in his voice. 

Heat rose to her face as she retorted, “I have enough!”

“Well, a material bribe won’t work on me,” Felix said. He seemed to hesitate, lips parted as he glanced from her to her sleeve where she’d tucked her letter. “I don’t think you should go.”

“You never do,” she said. “Nothing’s happened yet.”

“Maybe...not.” A sigh escaped him, and in moments like this with his expression so open - even if upset - and with him standing so close to her Annette couldn’t believe him a monster as he claimed. 

And then he tucked a loose curl behind her ear, and she forgot how to breathe. 

“If you must, make it brief,” Felix suggested, oh so nonchalantly, as if unaware what his small stupid gesture did. “Send your letter, then return?”

She exhaled as he stepped away from her, leaving her heart racing, syncopated against her ribs. “I-I’ll not give you enough time to miss me,” she promised. 

“Miss—fine,” he said, rolling his eyes, reverting to something like indifference. “Nothing you’ll find in town can be more dangerous than me anyway.”

His words were hardly comforting, but Annette still flashed him a smile. 

* * *

Annette had been to the small town some leagues from the castle several times, though never to mail a letter. Setting foot into a place with a lively populace chased away the gloom that seemed to follow her lately, but today something about the atmosphere felt...different.

Tense and rife with static, like the air before a thunderstorm.

Though the sun shone overhead, beating down on her with the easy warmth of mid-spring, several shopfronts were shuttered closed. No children played on the main street, kicking a ball or tossing sacks or clashing with wooden toy swords, and no stalls set up selling fresh fruit and small handmade crafts with the man or woman standing behind them shouting after her to buy something.

Few people were out and about, and the ones that were gave Annette a wide berth, their eyes narrowed when they fell to her before quickly sliding away.

Annette clutched her letter close to her chest, half-fearing someone might try taking it away, and wondered if she could’ve chosen a better day to mail it. 

Perhaps childishly, she didn’t want Felix to be proved right. 

If only she’d persuaded him to come with her, if only for his company. She grumbled, “No attention _to_ attract, is there?”

As she passed the bakery from which she’d indulged in a fresh loaf of bread and a simple oatcake last time, a flicker of motion in the window caught her eye. She turned towards it, frowning, until a sign on the door that hadn’t been there before drew her.

Annette approached - perhaps if she knocked the baker would see her? - but her heartbeat quickened. A simple board hung from a nail in the door, a red circle slashed through over a caricature of a silhouette with a long nose wearing a pointed hat.

As she stepped closer to the bakery, her foot slipped on a loose patch of soil. She fell backwards, a yelp torn from her, and landed hard on her backside. Winded and with her heartbeat in her bruised tailbone, she slowly stood and found that rather than soil or sand like she thought she’d slid on a trail of salt.

Fear caught in her chest. She didn’t have to be a scholar to recognize the message that the sign and the salt imparted on her:

_Witches unwelcome._

Annette scowled. “Salt doesn’t even do anything!” she snapped at the bakery door.

Predictably it didn’t respond to her, but that only frustrated her more.

The letter for her mother crumpled in her hand, but it was all too clear to her that she wouldn’t be able to send it from anywhere in this town with all of it shut tight to her. Foreboding crept up her spine, and she forced herself to keep a steady pace as she turned to leave, hands balled into fists at her sides and her shoulders stiff.

She just hoped Felix wouldn’t gloat when she returned with her tail between her legs. Not that he was prone to gloating, not _really_ , but despite how long she’d stayed in his castle she still couldn’t always predict him. His only real consistent habits were how frequently he hunted - once a week - how often he trained with a sword - every early morning until dawn - and that he would, inevitably, appear when she least expected him, creeping on too-silent feet.

Horses’ hooves sounded behind her not long after she left town, making her stiffen, but she resisted the urge to reach for her magic. The instant she cast a spell would be the instant they confirmed her a witch in truth, and if she could flee into the shelter the trees provided before then she would—

“Halt, witch,” a voice behind her called, seething with disgust.

Annette froze. The warmth of the day faded as a chill crept up her spine, as she found the magic at her fingertips and let it fill her with strength.

Men in armor and astride horses surrounded her, cutting off any path of escape. One carried a banner with the Crest of Seiros on it, marking them instantly as knights of the Church.

More dangerous than any hunters or mercenaries, to accused witches and other hated monsters alike. Unlike the others, Knights of Seiros would seek to take a witch alive to stand trial, but they would never afford the same courtesy to someone too astray of humanity, to a monster like Felix.

So she plastered a smile onto her face and glanced towards the man who she thought must’ve called out to her, hoping none of her fear seeped into her voice as she said, “Good afternoon to you! I’m afraid y-you’re mistaken, I’m just a local, um, a local maiden on her way home from the market, so if you would…” She trailed off when one of the knights unfurled a piece of parchment.

It bore a charcoal sketch in her likeness with a few notes scrawled at the bottom:

_Orange hair, petite frame, affinity for Wind, known associate of the Bloody Duelist._

“The...who is the _Bloody Duelist_?” Annette wondered, squinting at the parchment.

“The vampire that stalks these parts,” the lead knight informed her, sneering. “The one you’ve shacked up with.”

“The…” She could laugh, the nickname they gave Felix was just that ridiculous and barely hinted at the violence she’d witnessed him inflict. Even now, for all he’d thawed to her, for all she no longer feared he might prey on her, she feared what he could do.

But right now, she feared these knights more, and not just for her sake.

“You do not deny that you’ve forsaken your own kind to take a monster for a lover?” the knight said.

Annette - she could kick herself for such awful timing - flushed. “Well, I wouldn’t call him my—wait, so you do accuse me of witchcraft?”

“Those are the charges laid out against you by the Church and all polite society,” he agreed.

“Then by that logic I’d already ‘forsaken my own kind’!” she snapped, and with that she reached for the tempest inside her and stoked one to match around her.

Tree branches creaked and leaves rustled in the wind as it drove towards the lead knight. It crashed into his armor, and steel screeched when his breastplate dented.

But the knight didn’t so much as flinch. He only glared at her from beneath the visor of his helmet and held tight to his horse’s reins as it shifted backwards.

“We’re prepared to ward against your arcane arts, witch,” he told her. He raised a gauntleted fist. “Will you not surrender peacefully then?”

Annette took a step backwards, only for her to collide with a horse, for another knight to grab her shoulders and hold her in place. Her heartbeat hammered as she sought for a way out, desperate not to be captured all over again. Church knights would treat her better than bandits and mercenaries, than Kostas who’d used her to bait the monster that killed him instead, but surrendering would still mean her death and all hope lost.

Yet she asked, “W-what happens if I do surrender?”

“We take you to Garreg Mach to await trial,” the leader said.

“A-and my fr—and the vampire?” Annette said.

“Care not for that creature,” the knight advised her. “It might have tricked you into its thrall, but nothing more.”

She shook her head and tried to wrench herself from the grip of the man holding fast to her, but he held tight. Her heart and head alike rebelled against the knight’s words until she demanded, “Do you mean him any harm, or just me?”

The knight sighed, and even from beneath his visor Annette could tell the glance he shot her was full of pity. “We’ll deal with the monster another day,” he said. He looked to the man that held onto her. “Put her in shackles.”

Annette struggled again, against the hands that held her. Her heart jumped into her throat and energy coursed through her, magic with it. A current of it swirled out of her, the light of a spell aglow, and the knight let go of her with a pained gasp as if burned.

And he _was_ burned.

“You won’t take me,” Annette snapped as she spun around to face him.

Energy, sharp and concentrated, tore from her and struck him, but he only stumbled backwards, his armor warded the same as the other knights. Yet she still shaped her winds, made them bow to her will, made them fight for her and against them even as the knights tightened their formation and encircled her, even as hands grabbed her and forced her arms behind her back and snapped heavy iron shackles onto her wrists.

They cut her off.

Annette screamed, “No, not again!” She kicked out at the knight that grabbed her, her breath short, her lungs squeezed in her chest with her panic, but all she accomplished was losing her footing.

She would’ve fallen on her face in the dirt if not for unkind enemy hands holding her upright.

Or _kind_ ones that spared her the indignity of a slip.

“Sir, should we put her to sleep?” the one holding her asked as Annette still fought to squirm from his grip.

“You can’t manage one Silenced witch?” another knight sneered.

Annette dug her heels in as he tried to drag her towards a horse held still by the reins. The horse didn’t shy away from her - supposedly they rejected witches for riders, though the Church never used an acceptance for proof of innocence unless it suited them - but she doubted even astride it she would have the freedom to bolt away from these captors. “I’m not a witch,” she tried again, her voice pitching higher out of desperation. “I’m _not_.”

“We witnessed you cast your spells with our own eyes,” the leader pronounced. He hadn’t dismounted the entire brief scuffle and only appraised his men’s work, but now he swung a leg over his nervously shifting horse and slid off to approach her. “If you think the judge will take the word of an accused witch over that of Knights of the Church, then you are—“

He cut off with a wet, disgusting cough as blood sprayed from his mouth. His eyes widened with shock, hand falling to the sword at his hip before falling feebly.

His knees crumpled, and his body fell without so much as twitching.

Felix stood over him, sword in hand as its tip dripped blood onto the ground. Sunlight glinted off the steel blade as he raised it to his mouth.

Annette heard one of the knights retch, but all she could do was stare at Felix as he lowered it again. His expression never changed, something dark and livid despite the red now staining his chin, even as he asked, “Did you think your self-righteousness would protect you from me?”

She released a breath while the man behind her tightened his grip on her arms, while the knights that survived their commander drew their weapons, while their horses shifted and whinnied. “Felix…” she muttered under her breath. 

Daylight weakened him enough he avoided it, yet here he stood, facing a legion of knights that would be equipped to stand up against him.

He didn’t demand their surrender.

Felix struck impossibly fast, snarl twisting his lips, his sword a blur of gray and red. He dispatched one knight foolish enough to charge him easily, blood spattering past him.

Annette didn’t know how he did it, so easily finding the gaps in their armor, so swiftly turning a battle that should not be in his favor into his. He grabbed one by his vambrace and swung him around before disarming another and impaling him through the throat on his own lance.

The knights’ horses all fled, the ground trembling after they reared and galloped away, but they paid them no mind. The only one that didn’t try their luck against Felix was the one holding Annette, who had the presence of mind to shove him behind her.

It was absurd. Felix had no intention of hurting _her_.

The tip of a blade sliced open his cheek as a knight got in a lucky slash. Blood dripped down his face, and he hissed, sounding less a monster and more like an angry cat. His motions slowed, between the sunshine and all the attacks against him as the knights reorganized, a commander rising from within them.

“Take the witch and ride!” he shouted at the one holding Annette.

He did, his grip on her arm tightened before he ran, forcing her with him.

“N-no, let me—“ She tried to twist around, fear gripping her all over again as he sought to take her away, but her breath caught when Felix’s gaze slid past the fight before him and landed on her.

The instant of distraction cost him when a knight’s sword slashed across his abdomen.

Logically Annette knew a wound like that, something fatal if allowed to fester in a human, couldn’t kill Felix. Logically she knew he might weaken but would heal fast with rest and a little extra blood. Logically she shouldn’t worry or fear for his health or safety, because he was a monster and she had more in common with the men he slaughtered than she did with him.

Yet when he stumbled backwards from the knight that cut him, hand pressed to a wound that gushed a red waterfall, when his lips curled into an angry, predatory snarl as his foes pressed their advantage, terror bit at her.

She screamed, “Felix!”

She needn’t have bothered.

Felix gripped the hilt of his sword in two hands as he swung it at the head of one knight. The blow knocked his helmet crooked and stunned him with a drumming of steel, and Felix lost no time grabbing him by the neck and flinging him at one of his fellows.

They landed in a heap and barely had the chance to roll over and grope for weapons they’d lost before a blade cut their necks.

Now the only one left standing was the one that captured Annette. He shoved her away and hastily drew his sword as Felix turned his attention to him, eyes darker than flint and angry set in a face speckled with blood.

“S-save yourself,” the knight told her.

Annette didn’t move. A part of her was transfixed by how Felix moved, as fascinated as she was a little frightened. “I could say the same to you,” she retorted.

“A monster like it will turn on you without a second thought,” said the knight. “Y-you think it protects you b-because it _likes_ you? It’s just toying with its prey like a cat does. Y-you’re not a woman to it, j-just a mou—“

“You don’t know anything,” Annette hissed, even as doubt flickered through her.

But the knight paid her no mind. He raised his sword and charged Felix with a battlecry.

Their blades crashed together with a ring of steel. Felix darted out of the way, and the knight stumbled forward, unbalanced from the force behind his blow.

Felix scoffed and said, “I expected better of Church knights, but you’re all disappointing.” Yet blood seeped from that awful wound and soaked into his clothes. “You have no hunger.”

“F-Felix…” Annette said.

The knight faced him again. “Your kind are weaker by day,” he said, “and you’re injured.”

Felix’s eyes flicked past him to her. They scanned her, closely enough heat rushed to her face, before drifting away again. “I’m still stronger than _you_ ,” he sneered, “especially while you stand alone.”

“For them, I’ll fight you,” said the knight. He struck.

Annette charged.

Her shoulder collided with his armored back, and the impact probably hurt her more than it did him with the shock traveling through her body. But it stunned him enough a gasp tore from him.

He flung an arm out at her, trying to bat her away.

Felix’s sword parted his head from his neck.

Annette flinched as the man’s still-warm blood splattered onto her face and clothes. Her heart raced against her ribs and she gasped for breath though she barely did anything, desperate and uncertain and—

Absurdly she blinked tears from her eyes as she fought to breathe.

Felix scanned their surroundings, his shoulders still rigid and tense despite the eerie silence that gripped the forest, but before Annette could find her voice to call out to him his sword slipped through his fingers to the ground and he fell to his knees in front of her.

Her eyes widened, and she knelt before him, close enough to look into his face. “F-Felix, your wound, it—”

His gaze snapped to hers, and her breath caught in her lungs. He still looked...wild, as if he still fought for his life. He gripped her arms, tighter than any vice with his startling strength, yet Annette didn’t flinch.

She just witnessed him massacre a whole group of armed men that meant her ill, again, but rather than fear him she feared _for_ him. Was that...wrong?

“Felix,” she said in a low, urgent voice.

“Annette,” he all but exhaled.

His hands ran down her arms before he cupped her cheek, his bloodstained glove rough and sticky on her skin. Her lips parted in surprise, but then his hand fell away.

Felix stood in one smooth motion, as if the wound in his abdomen didn’t bother him, and circled to her back. He took her arm again and tugged her to her feet, courteous enough not to let go until she found her footing.

She held her breath, suddenly wary of having him at her back. His hand never lingered on her, but his cool breath whispered against the back of her neck and sent a shiver down her spine.

Then the rending of metal met her ears, and Felix stepped away from her.

Annette sighed in relief at the loss of the warded shackles. She let magic flood her again, let it spark at her fingertips just to feel its warmth.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I...they ambushed me after I left town, and you were...right.”

Felix still stood behind her, but when she glanced over her shoulder she saw the broken cuffs dangling from his fingers. “About what?” he wondered.

“About going into town being a bad idea,” she admitted. She pushed her sweaty - _bloody?_ \- hair away from her face and stared around at the macabre remnants of the battle. “What a mess, just for me…”

His lip curled with disgust. “They deserved it,” he said, but his expression fell away into something flatter, more closed off. “Their duty drove them to their deaths.”

“N-not you?” Annette said before she could stop herself. Her eyes widened at her own words, and she clapped her hands over her mouth as Felix’s expression mirrored hers.

“Their duty involved carting you to _your_ death,” he said simply. “I wouldn’t allow it, but if you think me a monster for this...you’re not wrong.”

“I don’t think—” she cut herself off with a sigh. They’d quarreled over this too many times for her to give into it again. “Fine. Thank you.”

“I don’t relish killing them,” Felix said, though he spoke so softly she wondered if his words weren’t meant for her. “I’m not like...not as far gone as that.”

“As what?” Annette asked, startled and...desperate for this glimpse.

“It doesn’t matter,” he told her. He retrieved his sword from where it fell before wiping the gore staining the blade on his trousers. “Let’s return to the castle,” he said.

She chased after him, trying not to linger too long among the knights’ bodies lest their ghosts decide to haunt her for her part in their demise. “What about your injury?”

“It’ll heal quicker once night falls,” he told her. And indeed he walked without limping, posture as perfect as always if with less grace.

Though she couldn’t miss how his eyes never lingered on any one point for long, his head tilted slightly as if listening for other threats.

Annette’s gaze still caught on the bloody gash in his stomach, where his shirt hung open, torn by an enemy sword. It oozed blood almost lazily, and if he’d been sliced any deeper it would’ve torn into his guts.

(Unless vampires didn’t have guts; did vampires even _need_ them?)

When they crested the low hill with the view of the castle below, Felix halted so abruptly Annette overtook him. She glanced over her shoulder at him, frowning. “Felix, are you all right?”

His eyes pinched together, and a grimace crossed his face so quickly she wondered if she imagined it. “I’m all right,” he assured her. “What of you? Did they hurt you?” His eyes narrowed, something dark crossing through them as he scanned her.

Annette flushed, self-conscious under his sharp gaze. She gripped her wrist, remembering the Warded shackles, and said, “I’m fine too. They wanted to take me alive. I...the last one you killed even told me to ‘save’ myself.”

Now she _knew_ she didn’t imagine his grimace before he crossed his arms and stared past her. “It’s never too late,” he reminded her before striding past her.

Where he usually slowed so she might keep pace with him, this time he left her behind. By the time she entered the castle’s wide, shadowy entrance hall, gasping for breath after running the entire way, Felix had vanished somewhere deep within his home.

* * *

Annette cooked and ate dinner alone in the castle’s great kitchen. The red light of sunset streamed in through a narrow window, yet she lit a candle and set it beside her while reading her book.

It was, as far as she could tell, a fairly accurate (if occasionally fanciful and basic) guide to how many of Fodlan’s monsters lived and behaved. She unearthed it while perusing the castle’s library - and stirred up a cloud of dust that settled in her hair in the process - and flipped past the sections on werewolves and selkies and sirens to the chapter on vampires.

_With swift feet and a voracious appetite, vampires are bloodthirsty in both a literal and metaphorical sense. Never challenge them by night, and never assume one dead unless you part its head from its body._

Annette’s stomach turned, and she set her fork down and pushed her half-eaten meal away before continuing her reading.

_Vampires heal swiftly, but they require a steady diet of human blood to maintain their metabolism. If grievously injured, particularly in the light of the sun and with a wound that would kill a human being, they will be weakened so severely they cannot heal without fresh blood, and even a rote task like hunting may prove difficult._

Her heart skipped a beat with a twisting of her gut. Felix...needed blood to live, she _knew_ this, but in his condition could he even _get_ it?

Was that why she hadn’t seen him since they returned to the castle hours ago? Had he slipped out again to go hunting?

Annette’s breath stuck in her lungs, a fresh wave of fear washing over her as she stood so abruptly her chair tumbled to the floor. She didn’t bother righting it and instead tucked the book under her arm and bolted from the kitchen.

She burst out into the empty dining hall, her footsteps echoing through the almost cavernous space, in too much of a hurry to be daunted by it all. She cursed the size of the castle as she sped down its length and emerged into the entrance hall.

“Felix!” she called, but the only response she got was her own voice reverberating off the stone.

She climbed the stairs two at a time, nearly tripping over the last one when she miscalculated, and ran down the corridor. The figures in the faded portraits stared at her as she sped past them, and not for the first time Annette dimly wondered what they thought of their descendant’s fate.

Or had they all been vampires? Many of Felix’s ancestors - because there was no doubt that at least most of these portraits were of long-gone family members - shared his features, the dark hair and the angular jaw and the almost cold cast of his amber eyes, with the rigid posture of a soldier.

And they all posed with sword or lance and the same bone-white shield, even the handful of women among them.

“Felix?” she tried again when she reached the closed door she’d assumed was his bedchamber (not that he ever slept). She raised her hand to knock, only for the door to swing open on squealing hinges first.

Annette jumped backwards, startled by his abrupt appearance and...how he appeared.

He hadn’t even changed his clothes, his shirt still bloody and torn around his middle and a few other places. A cut on his cheek stood stark on his pale face, and his gaze when it snapped down to her was...unfocused.

“What?” he said, tone clipped.

“You’re in pain,” Annette realized. Her grip on the book tightened along with her chest.

“I’m fine,” he said. He turned his face away from her and made to close the door, but she jammed her foot in the gap before he could.

She tried not to wince as she insisted, “Please let me see to your wound, Felix.”

His eyes widened very slightly. “It’ll heal on its own,” he told her. “I’ve been injured before.”

“Yes, but... _this_ badly?” Annette said.

Silence as Felix turned his head so she only saw his sharp profile in the gap between the door and the frame, until he admitted, “No, but it’s still daylight. I’ll heal—”

“The sun just set,” she said. “You need blood for this to heal properly, don’t you?”

“I’ll hunt again soon,” Felix said simply.

“While you’re weak with an injury and even a squire who can’t hold a sword straight could harm you?” Annette retorted. Impatience bit at her, and frustration burning hot with her need to make him understand...what?

What was she trying to accomplish by confronting him here, in his own room, in his damn creepy _castle_ when she didn’t know the first thing about treating a wound as terrible as his?

One he sustained rescuing her from her own stupidity at that.

But if there was something she could do, she would—

Her eyes widened as an idea struck her, hotter than lightning...and colder than ice water, yet she cleared her throat as if that would do anything to still the racing of her heart and asked, “Can you let me in?”

“I...why?” Felix said.

“So I can speak to you face to face,” Annette said, though her eyes trailed to her boots, hidden under the hem of her dress. “I have an idea.”

“An...idea?” he said, sounding dubious. “To heal me?”

“Y-yes,” she said. “Please let me in so I can tell you about it.”

“I can’t imagine what you can do,” Felix said in a low voice. “I—”

“You value your strength more than anything,” Annette snapped. “You won’t get it back by ignoring your wounds, so at least hear me out!”

He sighed, but he opened the door wider to admit her before walking deeper into the room.

She followed and, despite her urgency, couldn’t help but stare at her new surroundings. She’d been mistaken about this being a bedchamber, for judging from the great wooden desk and the towering bookshelves that bordered it, it was a study, and in far better repair than most of the castle’s other chambers with their moth-eaten and moldy furnishings. 

All of which Annette noted with only the barest hint of fading sunlight peeking through a gap in the curtains. Felix hadn’t lit any candles, perhaps because he didn’t need the extra light.

He leaned against the desk with his arms crossed as Annette approached him. “What’s your idea?” he wondered with a raised eyebrow.

She stared past him, well-aware she stalled as her pulse pounded in her ears and her stomach flipped with nerves. A big white shield - the same from those portraits? - hung from the wall behind the desk with a pair of pristine swords on either side of it.

It only took a second’s scrutiny for her to note that the shield and swords were the only items in the study without a fine layer of dust covering them.

“Annette,” Felix said. She jumped and glanced at him, and he rubbed his face. “Tell me your idea.”

“My...idea,” she echoed. She inhaled sharply and straightened, steeling herself, and said, “You need blood.”

He frowned. “While not incorrect, I don’t understand why this might be novel to me,” he said.

Annette rolled her eyes. She set the book down on the desk behind him - failing not to notice how he stiffened when she reached past him - and forced herself to meet his eyes. “You need blood to heal, but hunting is riskier while you’re in a weak state, so I, um, you need another source of blood.”

Felix snorted. “Is there a fountain somewhere that gushes fresh blood rather than water?” he asked. “I know of no other source than humans for that which sustains me, Annette.”

A shiver crawled up her spine at how...nonchalantly he spoke of something so gruesome, but she supposed it must be normal for him. “N-no, not a fountain obviously,” she said, shaking her head, “but…” Her heart seemed intent on escaping her through her throat, yet she found the wherewithal to tug the collar of her dress down and tilt her head to expose her neck. “I-I have blood to spare.”

Felix straightened and snapped, “No.”

“But it would be _easy_ ,” Annette insisted. “I’m right here, I’m _offering_ it to you, you can take just enough to heal.”

“You assume I don’t need enough it would kill you to take,” Felix hissed with a ferocity that startled her enough she stepped away from him. “Y-you assume I can... _control_ how much I take.”

“Can’t you?” Annette said, blinking.

To her surprise he laughed, a dark and sardonic sound with no humor that made her tense. “I suppose I’ve never personally tried,” he admitted, “but it’s not worth the risk.”

“Yes, it is!” she said. “I know you like the ‘challenge’ of a hunt, Felix, but you—you were injured for _my_ sake so at least let me do this for you!”

She sucked in a breath when he stepped towards her, so close she saw the instant his eyes flashed. “It’s not worth the risk to me,” he said, voice low and dangerous.

Annette bit her lip and hoped he couldn’t see how her face must be flushed at his...insistence. “Why is risking a hunt any different?” she demanded. “A-and why is—how am _I_ any different from your usual prey?”

Felix’s breath hitched. He scrubbed a hand over his face and turned away from her. “You would compare yourself to highwaymen and kidnappers?” he said. 

“No,” she said. “I didn’t think you were so selective.” No, he never claimed he killed the men who brought her here for any reason other than they were a _nuisance._

“I’m rejecting your idea,” he said.

“Do you have a choice?” Annette pressed. “Please, Felix, I”—she touched his shoulder—“want to help. I want to...you were hurt for my sake, so—”

He jerked away from her touch, as if it scalded him, and she withdrew her hand as hurt bit at her. “Enough.”

“No.” She scowled and, ignoring the tears pricking at her eyes, reached for the knife sheathed in Felix’s belt.

Annette drew it, the motion silent to her ears, but he spun around with wide eyes as she raised it. His cold fingers closed around her wrist, and despite the nastiness of his wound, despite the wild, desperate look in his eyes - or because of it - he held her with a startling strength. “Don’t you dare,” he growled.

She met his gaze. His eyes narrowed then, and he bared his teeth, a hint of fangs poking out like a cornered beast - and wouldn’t he _hate_ it if she voiced such a thought? - yet she felt not a single flicker of fear. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.”

“It’s after sunset,” Felix said. “I will hunt.”

“No,” Annette repeated. She tried to wrench her arm from his grip, and much good it did her. If he was of a mind to, he could snap it. “How many times do I have to argue this point until you _understand_?”

“And you think you understand my limits better than me?” he said.

Her grip on the knife’s hilt tightened, and she glared at him. “I know I don’t,” she conceded, “but you have nothing to lose by taking from _my_ blood, Felix.”

“Don’t have—nothing to lose?” He scoffed, and for one heartbeat she thought he would let her go, shove her away, give her a chance. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about anymore.”

“Is there something wrong with my blood then?” Annette asked. “It’s here, there may not be any ‘sport’ in it, but you can take just enough to heal to hunt later.”

“It’s _your_ blood,” Felix said, as if that explained anything. “I can’t—I don’t _need_ —I—”

“You do,” she said, even as her chest tightened. “Without it, you’ll wither away and it’ll be easy enough for the next Church knight that comes across us to kill you and—and take me.”

“I...Annette…” Something in his expression faltered, and he let her go and stepped away.

Annette wasted no time as her heart beat in her ears. She rolled up her sleeve and gritted her teeth before sliding the tip of the blade along the underside of her arm. Blood pooled along the narrow cut, and she winced at the pain flaring under her skin. Then she raised her eyes to Felix and found his, wide and shocked as if he doubted she might do it, on her arm.

On her blood.

“Well?” she prompted. “Would you really pass up a free meal, Felix? Would you make it so that I cut myself for nothing?” She knew it was unfair to play that card, but he could save his scolding for later.

Felix’s face seemed to convulse as if caught between too many expressions. He reached up, and Annette resisted the urge to flinch away - or to step closer - when he brushed a few strands of hair away from her face with a tenderness that startled her yet filled her with a rush of warmth. “You would really want to be at my mercy?” he wondered.

She bit her lip, against the pain in her arm, against the tightening in her chest, against all the emotion that welled up inside her like the blood welling from her cut. “It’s not so much that I would... _want_ to,” she tried to explain, “but that I’m willing. That’s all.”

It wasn’t nearly all, not when she couldn’t bear to see him in pain, but she couldn’t tell him anymore.

His fingers were cool against her wrist before flitting away again. Annette held her breath, the better to keep from demanding why he hesitated to just... _touch_ her, why he always had. When it proved too much the knife slipped from her grasp to bloody the ground, and she grabbed his hand and guided it back to her wrist.

Felix’s eyes pinched shut with an odd, pained expression as he raised her arm to his lips.

His tongue swept up what she’d already bled. Annette leaned against the desk beside him, wary of passing out should he take too much, as a shiver wracked through her.

Felix almost seemed to kiss along the length of the cut. Warmth flooded her, the heat of an attraction she’d failed to deny to herself, but she ignored it.

It had no place here. This was necessary; he’d warned her time and again that the key to his strength and fortitude, to keeping control of any base predatory and _animal_ instincts was blood.

He sucked at the cut. Her skin itched, and she had to sit on her other hand to avoid trying to scratch even as she shuddered at the strange sensation.

She couldn’t decide if she liked it or reviled it.

Felix’s other arm wrapped around her waist to pull her flush against him. She trembled, her body warm where his was cold, and she couldn’t help the sigh that escaped her.

Perhaps she...did like it, or at least liked being so close to him, with his arm around her in an approximation of an embrace, with his cool lips on her skin. Her head lolled against his shoulder as a haze engulfed her mind. If she stood upright her head would spin, but now she just wanted to revel in the heat filling her even as Felix drew blood from her body into his.

Annette’s fingers caught in his torn shirt, and her eyes slipped shut. She inhaled, taking in his strange cinnamon and woodsy scent underneath the blood staining his clothes, underneath the smell of her own blood. She hummed before mumbling, “Felix, you—”

He gasped as he lifted his face from her arm. The motion jostled her, lifting the cloud from her thoughts, and she stood.

Heat rushed to her face, and her knees shook but she kept her balance as she faced him, as he withdrew his arm from her waist.

Annette’s hands trembled too as she reached for his shirt. She fumbled with the buttons, relieved when Felix didn’t fight her, perhaps as dazed as her from taking her blood. His cool breath on her forehead made goosebumps rise from her skin, and before Annette could push his shirt aside to check if his wound had begun healing something brushed her face.

She stiffened. Felix had grasped her chin between his thumb and forefinger, his grip loose and almost gentle, and—

She tilted her head back while her heart skipped a beat. Blood still dripped down her arm, staining her hand, and the same blood dampened Felix’s mouth red, yet Annette could only stare up at him, into fathomless eyes, down to his—

“I don’t understand you,” he admitted in a low voice that sent a shiver down her spine.

“What…?” She didn’t understand his words either, so she frowned.

“You don’t...you should be afraid of me,” he said. “How we met, what you’ve seen me do, how easily I could’ve killed you now...” His eyes narrowed, turning sharp as they drifted down to her neck. “I-I want...I don’t want…” He closed his eyes, nose wrinkling, and shook his head.

“I-I let you,” she said. “I knew you wouldn’t, y-you’ve saved my life twice.” She rested her hand against his chest, over where his perpetually dying heart beat weakly. “Felix, I—“ She cut herself off, mouth dry when his throat convulsed.

He swallowed, and his gaze snapped to hers again.

Annette leaned towards him, drawn to him, _wanting_ him.

Felix let go of her chin to grab her shoulders, touch careful but deliberate, before nudging her away. “Go bandage your arm,” he told her as his eyes drifted away from her.

She blinked at him, confusion gripping her and no small amount of hurt lancing her own heart. “Felix?”

His lips, still red with her blood, parted, as if he wanted to add something, but he dropped his hands from her and crossed his arms. “I’ll go hunting now,” he said. “I doubt I’ll return till after you wake.”

Annette hesitated, despite his dismissal and how it left her cold, before saying, “Be careful in case there are anymore knights lurking around. I’ll never forgive you if you aren’t.”

“I know,” Felix said. He made no move to leave.

Nor did he glance at her.

Annette slipped out of the study first and resisted the urge to look back.

* * *

Annette didn’t mourn the town’s rejection, not _really_. She knew how to bake bread, and even if she didn’t she’d found a few old cookbooks in the castle’s library. 

The pages clung to the spine by only a few threads of glue, sure, but if she was careful - and with books, no matter what sort, she was _always_ careful - she could still flip through them. 

No, what Annette mourned was her routine with Felix.

He used to keep her company while she cooked, or while she cleaned, always (or often) reliably there when she needed something out of her reach. His habit of lurking crept on them gradually, first when he happened upon her singing while she slid volume after volume from the bookshelves in the library to wipe dust from forgotten nooks then more purposefully while he leaned against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed and let her brandish a wooden spoon at him until he sampled her food.

“Too bland,” he always complained before reminding her, “You know I can’t taste much.”

And then Annette bartered away some fancy household paperweight Felix had no attachment to for a precious jar of ground pepper in town, because whether he needed to eat what she did or not, she wanted to do...something for him.

It sat on a shelf inside the cupboard, half-empty between a pot of honey and sack of flour. Annette stared at it with a huff, wondering why she bothered stowing things away so high, and climbed onto the counter.

She grabbed the sack of flour to wrestle it out, only for the motion to knock the pepper jar off the shelf.

Annette lunged for it with a gasp, but it slipped through her fingertips and shattered against the floor, spilling its contents in a red cloud of powder.

Her eyes watered almost instantly, and she covered her mouth as she fell into a coughing fit. She gave up on the flour to clamber back down, gingerly stepping around shards of ceramic in search of a brush and dustpan.

Her first thought as she started cleaning her mess was, _Now Felix won’t eat with me anymore._

Her second thought was a reminder that he would sit with her before she bought the ground pepper, and that it had already been almost a week since he last did.

Annette slumped, her chest aching all over again. She stared at her wrist, where a bandage she probably didn’t need anymore peeked out past her sleeve, and sighed.

A week since the incident with the knights, since he saved her life and she gave him from her blood. A week since he last met her eyes or even looked at her.

Annette wished she could find a way to convince him to face her again.

* * *

Without Felix to keep her company, with him diving around corners and into different corridors if their paths so much as crossed, Annette found herself with more free time than she knew what to do with. At first she wrote a few more letters to her mother, pouring her heart out into them since she knew she would never be able to send them with town so risky, yet she hesitated to explain her problem with Felix.

 _Is this how you felt when Father left?_ she wrote (and immediately blotted it out with so much ink she couldn’t read it anymore, though she remembered).

Annette read more, including books she’d already perused when she wanted to understand more about her strange and lonesome host. She scanned a book on genealogy that she suspected traced the lineage of this castle’s masters and more closely examined the portraits that stared down from the walls.

 _The Great Bloodline of Fraldarius_ . It even _sounded_ old, and Annette thought she recognized the name from a deceased noble house.

Or...thought dead, for marked on the last page she found _Felix Hugo Fraldarius_.

Either Felix had stolen his name from the castle’s last master, or he _was_ its last master.

She squinted at the brief description beneath the name, noting the birthdate and date of death. “Then by all accounts,” Annette mumbled to herself, “you died over two centuries ago.”

Unsure what to do with this new information, she read backwards. The lords of Fraldarius had been vassals of the old Blaiddyd kings, and perhaps as such both houses died out around the same time when disaster gripped Faerghus, when monsters created by enemies of the Church began to prowl its forests. The most powerful noble houses had been annihilated and magic made criminal by the Church lest anyone who cast spells be a foe that lurked in the dark, yet perhaps—

“What are you doing up there?”

Annette, caught reading atop a stepladder, jumped, heart leaping with her. When she landed her foot slipped and she yelped as she fell backwards.

Something - someone caught her, strong, solid arms that fit around her in the heartbeat before the book collided with the floor beside them. Her heart beat in her ears, her breathing heavy, and then her feet touched the ground again.

Felix stepped away from her, so quickly - even for him - as to be deliberate.

She opened her mouth to thank him for catching her, but with how the heat rushed to her face at the indignity of falling only for him to _catch_ her she spluttered, “We’ve talked about you a-announcing yourself before, you villain!”

His lips pressed together in a thin line, and he still refused to look at her. He leaned down and picked the book up, eyes widening before narrowing into something harder than flint. “I thought I hid this thing,” he mumbled under his breath, so low Annette didn’t doubt he hadn’t meant for her to hear.

“Then I wasn’t meant to find it, was I?” Annette said.

He stiffened, gaze flitting to her before sliding away again, and said, “You weren’t. It’s nothing that matters.”

“It’s your lineage, isn’t it?” she wondered. “Your name is the last one, but it says you...died two hundred years ago.”

“I did,” he said. “As you can see, I am—”

“You’re obviously still alive,” Annette said. She crossed her arms, eyes narrowing as if she could pin Felix to the spot, as if through sheer force of will he would stop evading her. She tried to soften her voice as she continued, “Maybe it’s in a different form, but—“

He shook his head, lip curling. “What life is this?” he demanded. He threw the book onto a low table, and it fell open to the page she last read. “What _existence_ , that I _live_ so long as no one kills me, alone and always on the verge of—of losing my damn mind!”

His voice rang out through the library before the books on the shelves absorbed it, rang through Annette’s head as she stared at him with wide eyes, her fist over her racing heart. “You…”

“I have no wish to truly die like the rest of my family,” Felix admitted then, his jaw tight and eyes downcast. “Perhaps that’s why I’ve been cursed with such a life that I must destroy others just to experience an ounce of the humanity I once did.”

His words left her at a loss of what to say. She could only watch him pacing like a caged beast, inching closer to the door and further away from her, before she reached for him. “B-but if you were born a human like me, maybe we can find…”

She trailed off when he slipped away, leaving her behind and alone with the chaos of her thoughts and the crushing reality of her own uselessness.

* * *

If Annette ever thought the castle too big and shadowy and—and _haunted_ by day, night was far worse. Noises outside, of whistling wind and groaning stone, raged louder, and every silhouette of dusty tapestry or old crockery or outdated suit of armor seemed a ghost ready to trail after and possess her as she passed. 

Usually she walked the corridors with a lit candle to chase away the ghosts and her own fear when she couldn’t sleep, but tonight…

She fled. 

Annette packed the guilt that insisted she abandoned Felix - really, she would be luring away any persistent Knights of Seiros - alongside the rest of her meager belongings. She pushed back her own ache that she would leave him to himself and his loneliness like this without even a note to explain herself. 

But Felix treated her so coldly of late, if she simply disappeared into the night, away on her original mission, why would he care?

Every time he turned his face away from her he might as well have run her through with his sword. She’d bled for him - he’d bled for _her_ \- and still he ignored her.

Lightning flashed as she crossed a window, and beyond rain hammered against the panes. Thunder shook the castle’s great stone walls, reverberating through Annette’s body. An ominous sign for leaving, enough it gave her pause; if she set out in the midst of a storm water would soak her to the bone as soon as she set foot outside.

She plowed on. If she faltered now, she’d never leave. 

Felix himself assailed her in the castle’s wide entrance hall. He crept down the stairs on too silent footsteps, eyes flashing brighter, more dangerously, than the lightning as he approached her.

Annette hesitated again, but she sucked in a breath to try to steady her nerves and announced, “I’m leaving tonight. I—you’ve made it clear you no longer want me here, so I—”

“What are you talking about?” Felix demanded. He stepped towards her, gait jerky as he reached out.

“You’re pretending I don’t exist,” she snapped. Furious tears pricked at her eyes, but she resisted them. “I wanted to understand you better, I tried to help you by giving you blood, but all you do is... “ She trailed off as her breath stuck in her throat before straightening her back and forcing herself to meet his eyes. “I have other things I need to do that don’t involve a villain like you.”

Annette turned to go.

When next she blinked Felix was at her side.

She flinched, startled, but the stricken look on his face rooted her to the spot. “Felix—”

“No,” he said, abruptly. “You can’t go, you’re...the only one left.” He didn’t plead - Annette was sure he was too proud to beg - but the emotion in his voice made her heart stutter.

Yet still she said, “I can’t just stay here, Felix.”

His gaze hardened, and fear flickered within her before his hands shot out and wrapped around her arms to drag her towards him.

Annette’s heart hammered against her ribs when she met his gaze and found something...desperate. Her fingers bunched in his shirt, just for something to grip, when he leaned down.

His breath, icier than the rain, cooled her skin before his fangs sank into her neck.

Annette gasped as she jerked up, clutching at her bedsheets as thunder rumbled outside. She stared around her shadowed bedroom, as she fought to catch her breath and rested her hand against her chest, waiting for her heartbeat to steady. “What…”

Her nightgown stuck to her skin, and as she sat there on her bed in the dark, she buried her face in her hands, shivering.

“A nightmare,” she mumbled to herself, and even a glance to the side showed her she’d fallen asleep before the candle on her bedside table sputtered out, the book she’d been reading still lying open beside her. Her shoulders slumped as she marked her page and closed it, but no matter how much she thought only of taking each breath then the next her heartbeat wouldn’t calm.

She threw her covers aside, lit another candle, and crept out of her bedchamber. Perhaps a walk through the...shadowy, eerie castle while it stormed would help.

The stone floor was cold under her feet, and the chill seeped into her skin. Her sweat had dried, leaving her shivering in her nightgown, and she regretted not grabbing a cloak.

Annette walked alongside her shadow and watched it flickering in the light of her candle. She hummed under her breath, hoping her heartbeat would match the tune, before whispering, _“In the deep dark castle, I take a walk. Such a shame the portraits on the walls don’t want to talk…”_

What would they tell her, if they could? Would they speak of the things their subjects did in their lifetimes, or would they regale her with stories of what they’d witnessed after hanging from the walls?

What could they tell her of their descendant, of the castle’s master, of his long ago childhood? Had he always been so devoted to swordsmanship? Had he ever had friends, or was he always such an odious, lonesome, _evil_ —

A flicker of lightning revealed a pale face around the next corner.

Annette flew backwards, yelping, but before she could chide Felix for always sneaking up on her, he too stepped back, his eyes wide.

Did she somehow manage to sneak up on _him_?

Thunder swallowed any other sound they might’ve made as Felix inched towards her. He walked stiffly, less with his usual graceful - if predatory - gait and something more shuffling, almost nervous. The next lightning strike cast him in light and revealed his dark hair plastered to his forehead and his clothes stuck to his skin.

“A-are you back from a hunt?” Annette asked in a low voice. She approached, raising the candle to better see if he was hurt, not that he ever returned from a _hunt_ injured, but he shied away from her. “Felix?”

“Yes,” he said. He pushed the damp strands of his hair away from his face. “You’re not asleep.”

“I...woke up,” she admitted. “I had a nightmare.” A shiver crawled up her spine, and her grip on the candle holder tightened. “Did you...feed?”

Something in his posture shifted, and she heard him sigh. “Don’t worry about me, Annette,” he said. “Go back to bed.”

“But if you…” She trailed off, remembering him in her nightmare, jumpy and angry and as monstrous as the knights that tried to arrest her saw him, so at odds with how he usually - _used to_ \- treat her. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

“If it mattered, maybe,” Felix said, to her surprise.

“But if there’s something I can do to—”

“You only need to worry for yourself,” he insisted. “The Church won’t give up on you so long as they know you’re sheltering here.”

Guilt bit at Annette, sharper than a knife. “I brought them to your doorstep too, didn’t I?”

“They’re nothing to me,” he said.

“They’ve hurt you before,” she reminded him. “One can hurt you again, and if—”

She cut herself off when cold, strong fingers wrapped around her wrist. Her jaw snapped shut when Felix’s amber eyes dropped to meet hers.

The candle holder slipped through her fingers, and the flame flickered out before the candle struck the floor. The only light that remained was the next lightning strike, and even the thunder couldn’t seem to drown out Annette’s heartbeat in her ears.

He stood so close he could probably hear it too, so close she was conscious that she only wore a nightgown with a collar low enough it left her neck exposed.

“You haven’t fed tonight,” she realized then.

Felix grimaced, but he let her go and stepped away.

“When was the last time you did?” she pressed.

“It’s been a...few days,” he said. He cleared his throat and shifted his feet, looking as if he wanted nothing more than to flee.

“H-have you fed since we, um, since those knights tried to take me?” Annette said. Her stomach knotted with dread, and she curled her hands into fists at her sides. But she—

“Once, after you—after that,” Felix said.

“But not since? Why not?” she demanded.

“The Church has been sending more knights,” he said. He crossed his arms, and his shoulders hunched. “I’m only protecting y—my territory.”

“Why not hunt them?” she wondered, actually curious. Felix wasn’t...picky and didn’t seem to have any preferences - certainly not _young maidens_ like Kostas thought, to his grief - yet he never bothered with the knights that attacked her, though he had no qualms preying on other trespassers. 

Felix’s nose wrinkled with undisguised disgust. “Knights of the Church drink a tonic that makes their blood...vile,” he said. “Feeding from one of them is no better for me than ingesting poison for you would be.”

“I—what?” she said, her eyes wide and incredulous. “Why do they do that?”

“You really don’t know?” he said. When she shook her head he scoffed and explained, “Should they fall prey to one of my kind, this is how they keep us from...defiling their bodies.”

“Oh, that’s...inconvenient,” Annette said. She couldn’t think of much else to say, but it struck her as terribly unfair that they would resort to such lengths just to weaken Felix.

Though they would doubtless view it as justified. To them he was a monster worthy of death, but to her he was...something - some _one_ \- else.

“Can’t you venture further to hunt then?” she said.

“That’s not a possibility at the moment,” Felix said. Lightning cast deep shadows across his face, softening his sharp profile, and for an instant Annette’s breath caught.

“Why not?”

“It would require leaving you alone,” he said simply. “I would find easier prey, but it would make _you_ easier prey too.”

“I’d be fine alone for a few days,” Annette insisted. “I would—”

“And what would you do if so many knights carrying wards overwhelmed you again?” Felix said, his tone darkening.

“I would—I would—” She broke off with a frustrated hiss and buried her face in her hands. How useless and _helpless_ she’d become in all this. The only useful thing she’d done since arriving here had been giving Felix from her own blood.

Oh.

Her tongue moved faster than her mind, faster than she could calculate the risk or compose an argument for when he refused. “Then if you can’t hunt,” she said, “take just enough from me to maintain your strength.”

“Absolutely not,” Felix said. “Last time I only did because I wouldn’t have healed otherwise.”

“And because I cut my arm myself,” she said. “Do I need to do that again?”

“N-no, no, stop that,” he said, something frantic in his voice as he took a hesitant step towards her.

Annette took another towards him. “From where is easier?” she wondered. She rolled her sleeve halfway up to her elbow before her nightmare crossed her memory. “W-would my neck be—”

“No,” he cut her off, shaking his head.

She lunged forward and grabbed his arm with both hands, though he could easily shake her off. “Felix,” she said in a low, urgent voice, “listen to me: y-you’re afraid of losing control of yourself, right?”

His gaze drifted down to her face, level with his shoulder, before he slowly nodded.

“You’ll justify that fear if you don’t take at least a little blood from me,” Annette said. “B-better now while you have more control of yourself than later when it’s been even longer since you’ve fed.”

Felix scrubbed a hand over his face, a hiss whistling through his teeth. “Why couldn’t you sleep through just one night?” he muttered.

“It’s a good thing I woke up,” Annette insisted.

His eyes pinned her in place, long enough that she could no longer tell if her heart beat louder than the thunder, but at last he exhaled and said, “Your wrist.”

His agreement startled her so much she might’ve tumbled over if she hadn’t been holding onto him. But she let him go to finish rolling up her left sleeve and holding her arm out to him.

Felix gingerly - gently - took her wrist in his hand. His thumb stroked over where her pulse thrummed under her skin, and she inhaled at a rush of warmth. “You’re really not afraid?” he asked her.

Annette shook her head.

“Your heart’s beating so fast I’d think you’re lying,” he said. His other hand, the one not clutching her arm, flitted to her waist before falling away.

“Then I...it’s not that I’m not afraid,” she confessed, staring at his collar because she couldn’t meet his eyes just then. “I trust you not to hurt me, at least not more than necessary.”

“Necessary…” Felix echoed with a snort. “I hate this.” He spoke with such venom.

“I brought my problems to you,” Annette said, sighing. “This is the least I can do to make up for it.”

“You’re worse than foolish if you think this ‘makes up’ for it,” he groused, but then his breath slid over her wrist as he raised it to his face. “Your skin is so soft, and your wrist is so thin. I-it’s hard to believe the Church would see you as a threat.”

She scowled up at him, but to her gratification the barest hint of a smile flickered across his face, illuminated by a timely lightning strike. “And yet they do,” she said, “and I’d thank you not to make light of it.”

His expression slipped into a deep frown, one that made her chest tighten. “I would never,” he said, tone solemn.

“I could push you away if I felt any danger to myself,” Annette offered him one last reassurance. 

“Weak with losing blood and where I can easily overpower any physical resistance?”

She rolled her eyes and tried not to betray any trepidation she felt, only said, “You go out of your way to keep others from harming me. I trust you, Felix.”

Felix met her eyes with his own before they slipped shut. He nodded almost imperceptibly, and at last his mouth fell to her pulse.

For all his resistance, Felix no longer hesitated. The tip of his tongue touched her skin in the instant before his fangs pierced it.

Annette grabbed his shirt to keep from stumbling into him. A startled gasp tore from her, and in the next moment, as her heart pushed her blood through her body, pain flared under her wrist.

She bit her lip to keep from crying out at it, because then surely Felix would hear, and he would stop, unless he wouldn’t, unless he forgot himself, forgot to worry over any pain she might feel.

The flame flickering under her skin cooled into a low, simmering burn. She shuddered when he retracted his fangs, when he sucked at the fresh cut instead, and this...this was more familiar, more like last time when she cut herself so he wouldn’t have to.

Annette rested her forehead against his arm as he bled her. His grip on her wrist tightened, and a sigh escaped her at a wave of heat washing over her.

How could something so...strange, so unnatural, feel so good?

How could someone with flesh so cold send warmth shooting up her arm from his touch?

Her head spun, her knees shaking. Felix’s arm wrapped around her waist to hold her upright, something deliberate and almost gentle in the gesture, and Annette wondered if he held all his victims like this, or if there was something special about her.

There should be, shouldn’t there? Why else would he go to such lengths, drive himself to weakness, just to protect her?

Why, after so long spent with him dodging around corners just to avoid her, did that buoy her so much?

_I love him._

The thought rose unbidden to her mind, but rather than rebel against it, she let it make itself comfortable, accepted it into herself and her being, that she’d somehow fallen in love with a monster that killed humans for their blood, who could so easily kill her for hers.

Strange...shouldn’t that alarm her more? Or maybe Annette was just a sort of masochist, doomed to give her heart to a reticent villain that reveled in his hunt yet wanted _her_ safe, that eavesdropped on her singing around corners, that sampled the food she cooked though he could barely taste it, that kept his secrets close to his chest and refused to tell her why he lived alone, and why he let her in.

She nuzzled into his arm, the one he held almost numb. “Felix…” she mumbled into his sleeve. With her free arm she embraced him.

He detached himself from her wrist with a sharp intake of breath, eyes wild and unfocused and _dark_ when they fell on her again. She stared up at him, a half-delirious smile curving her lips, before reaching up with her other hand to swipe her thumb at the corner of his mouth where a drop of blood - her blood - slid down.

Felix’s gaze flicked down lower. He still held her wrist with one hand, but with the other he cupped her jaw and tilted her head back.

He lowered his face to her neck. 

Annette’s eyes fluttered shut when his cool breath brushed her skin. Her breath stuck in her lungs as she cupped the back of his head, her fingers touching his soft hair.

She should be frightened, tense, _cold_ . She should have a spell ready at her fingertips to defend herself, a blade in her hand to stick in his back with _him_ vulnerable, a will to fight and free herself from the clutches of a monster.

And yet. 

Felix held her gently, like glass, like something - or someone - precious. He could end her life so easily to sustain himself, could return to his solitary existence without blinking an eye, and Annette, drunk on his touch and heedless to her own blood trickling down her arm, could fail to fight him. 

And yet. 

“H-have you already had enough?” she whispered, because to speak louder felt like a worse sacrilege than anything else she’d done. 

Felix’s grip on her waist tightened, his breath stuttering against her skin. “Will I ever?” he said in a low, hoarse voice that filled her with heat. 

“Do you want more?” Annette asked. Her voice drowned with distant thunder, but she knew he heard her underneath it. 

“Yes,” he confessed, a hiss of air caressing her. 

“Then take,” she said. And what else could she do for him?

She was ready for it this time, yet a gasp still escaped her. Ready for the strange burn and the unreachable itch, for the pleasure and heat sinking through her, for his strong grip holding her in place as she curved into him, just as wanting.

Annette forgot her nightmare, forgot what drove her from her bed. She forgot the danger as the world coalesced to this dark, dismal corridor, to Felix’s arms and his fangs in her neck and her own hands clutching at his hair and shirt. 

Her head lightened, foggy all over again, before Felix withdrew. She blinked to clear the cloud drifting over her vision, trying to draw his face into focus, trying to lift her arm again to wipe the blood from his chin and maybe wipe the frown from his lips and maybe he would smile if she assured him he hadn’t hurt her and he’d felt so—so _pleasant_. 

He rested a hand against the side of her neck, right over where he’d bitten her, and leaned towards her. “Annette…” he murmured. 

She loved how he said her name, wanted him to say it more, wanted him to whisper it against her lips when he—

A wave of dizziness rushed over her as her heart skipped a beat. Her knees buckled and she pitched forward into Felix. 

He caught her shoulders and held her upright as she stared at his mouth and watched it shape a word. Her grip on his shirt faltered and his face blurred, and distantly heard panic in his voice when he called her name again. 

His fingertip touched her wrist - the one that wasn’t bleeding - before he swept her up, mumbling what to her sounded like nonsense…

“Not her...not this...not like him…”

Annette slipped into unconsciousness nestled against his chest, his weak heartbeat under her ear. 

Sunlight woke her, hot on her face as it streamed in through a window. She rolled onto her back and blinked groggily up at the ceiling, confused and unsure where she was until she recognized her bedchamber. She groaned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, only for something poking out of her sleeve to catch her eye.

Annette rolled down her sleeve just enough to find a handkerchief wrapped around her wrist, two pinpricks of dark brown staining it right over her pulse. 

The memory trickled back.

She bolted upright, heart pounding and lips parted, then buried her face in her bloodstained pillow and screamed.

**Author's Note:**

> I accept tribute in the form of comments. And yes this fic is a somewhat distant sequel to [this one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22314934) but i elected not to pair them properly. either way hope you’ve liked this one!


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